USA, Health Care Reform (3)

Apesar do fracasso da indigitação de Tom Dasche para Secretário da Saúde e Recursos Humanos da Administração. link Apesar da crise que leva ao desemprego todos os dias um número crescente de cidadãos americanos. link Há quem, defenda o avanço da reforma para a criação de um sistema de saúde de tipo universal Health Care Now (link)

Há quem também, face aos inúmeros e difíceis obstáculos que se adivinham no horizonte, veja com cepticismo a almejada mudança do sistema de saúde dos EUA Health Care Reform — Why So Much Talk and So Little Action? (link) .
Certo é que a discussão sobre a reforma de saúde prossegue animada nos EUA. Longe do consenso sobre o rumo a seguir. Efectivamente, a ponderação das inúmeras dificuldades a vencer parece dividir a nação americana.

Interessante este apontamento de uma colega blogger americana: «In a private conversation with bloggers at the Families USA healthcare conference last week, Princeton healthcare economist Uwe Reinhardt recalled a conversation, when he asked health care economist Victor Fuchs, “When will we ever have universal health insurance in the U.S.?”
Fuchs’ answer: “Not until World War III, a Great Depression, or a major epidemic that threatens everyone.”
In other words, Fuchs believed that it would take a catastrophe before Americans finally would realize that we are all in one boat together: Wars, natural disasters and economic upheaval can create great solidarity.
We may not have long to wait. Despite President Obama’s best efforts, it is all but inevitable that this recession will deepen. As the president warned last night, this is not an “ordinary, run-of –the-mill” recession. In the worst-case scenario, the meltdown could lead to a “lost decade” of growth.
At this point, America’s middle-class finds itself on the edge of a cliff. As unemployment rises, it will become apparent how quickly an upper-middle-class family can find itself part of the middle class—no longer able to afford private school, skiing vacations, or, in the worst case scenario, the payments on a mega- mortgage. Meanwhile, middle-class families risk slipping quietly into the nearly invisible lower-middle-class—a group often referred to as “the working poor.”
Rising insecurity should mean that the push for healthcare reform will build. But the recession cuts both ways: it also means that government tax revenues will shrink, leaving fewer dollars for the subsidies we will need if we hope to cover everyone. Conservatives will say that we cannot afford healthcare reform.» (reference Uwe Reinhardt: “The U.S. is Not a Democracy; it’s an Aristocracy”).